


Night Hunting

by wrabbit



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Attempted Murder, Comment Fic, Community: fic_promptly, F/F, Knives, Murder, Prompt Fic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:31:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrabbit/pseuds/wrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jenny runs into trouble in the dark and draws the attention of a dangerous woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Hunting

**Author's Note:**

> Kindly betaed by notthemarimba.

They were crouching in darkness near the mouth of the alley, the short cut Jenny had taken home so no one unfriendly in the street would see her walking alone. Two hulking shadows that slid out of the wall as she passed and lunged before she could escape into the street, pulling her back kicking and fighting into the privacy of the narrow corridor.

Jenny cringed, all her guts shrinking away when the man gripping her by the upper arm cupped her cheek with a dirty, calloused hand. Two fingers were missing. He forced her to tilt her neck up until she looked at him, her glaring face lit up by the faint, yellow light of the moon glowing somewhere beyond the fog. He grunted, "It's her." 

The other man pulled a small, curved knife from his jacket.

She struggled to pull free, calling for help as they pulled and crowded her further back into the alleyway where the shadows were deepest, forcing her to trip more than once. 

"Don't scream, now," the man with the knife said. He stepped close and her eyes watered from the smell, enveloped between them in his personal cloud of fish and body odor. "It's dangerous for a pretty thing to draw attention to herself in a place like this." 

"I think I already have," Jenny said behind gritted teeth, pulling against the grip of the man charged with holding her.

"Your brother's been very, very bad, Miss Flint," the man with the knife spoke again.

Jenny glanced up to his shadowed eyesockets at the sound of her name. Fear tightened into an urgent fist in her chest and she struggled to get an arm free. She barely felt it when her wrist was wrenched back between her shoulderblades, her heart was pounding in her chest so hard. The fish man rubbed the flat of the blade with one black-nailed thumb. 

"Better hurry," the other warned him.

"But I don't even know where he is," she said. "I haven't seen Tom for three days." 

"He'll come home when he finds we saw you first. And when he does, he'll see what stealing from our friends gets him and his." 

Before they could cut the air out of her to pay her brother's debts, Jenny drew in a breath to yell for help with all she had when two things happened in succession. The first man released her arm and wrist and dropped in a wilted heap without a sound. Then the other fell to his knees, drawing Jenny's attention before she could look around. A knife or a short sword was buried in the flesh of his throat. He gurgled, eyes bulging as blood began to pour out of the wound over his shirt. The sharp smell of piss and blood rose in the damp river air and Jenny stumbled back, away from the bloody hand reaching out for her skirts. 

She was caught from falling backwards in the mud and the blood by an arm around her waist that dragged her back from the bodies until she got her footing. Jenny's gasp of relief and gratitude died in her chest when, before she could turn around, one leather-gloved hand covered her mouth and the clean point of a blade, shorter than the one buried in the now-dead man's neck, was raised to rest against her shoulder. The polished edge glinted in what little light there was to see by, angled only inches from Jenny's throat. 

Jenny's attempt to scream for help faded into whimpering behind the hand that pressed firmly over her mouth, holding her lips shut as she was hugged to her savior's chest. "Shhh."

The two men lay half in shadow, invisible from the street, one soaked in a spreading puddle of black blood. The other could have been unconscious, but his eyes were wide open like a dead man's. 

Jenny shuddering breathing through her nose was loud under the muffling blanket of the night fog. She could feel their killer's exhales ruffling the hair above her ear as she was walked slowly away from the two men's bodies. They turned the corner, into the backstreet, and the hand that covered Jenny's mouth lowered to wrap around her waist. Away from the corpses, Jenny could smell other things, rotting and river muck, but also lavender and leather, clean, expensive smells that did not belong in this part of the city. 

"Don't move. Did you know those men?" the cultured voice of a woman spoke quietly from above Jenny's ear.

Jenny drew in a sharp breath. She looked to either side, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman restraining her, tempted to turn her head despite the blade's warning. "No," she answered the calm, curious question under her breath. 

"But you know who they are."

Jenny didn't answer, shivering. 

"Shh," the woman whispered again. "Those weren't ordinary brutes. Someone's in trouble. Is it you?" The arm around Jenny's waist tightened and they took another step back, further into the shadow of the brick wall. The backstreet was abandoned by night, littered with shadowy hulks of trash. The perfect place to hide a few corpses.

"My brother," Jenny whispered back. "Please," she said, voice rising as the woman adjusted her grip on Jenny and the sword. "When they find the bodies they'll kill me twice over. What do you want from me?"

"Information," the woman articulated. Jenny exhaled, her grip on the arm that held her against the taller woman's chest loosening. Even if she didn't join the two dead tonight, she and her brother would be killed in due time, revenge for the men come for her already. 

"Failing that," the woman said, sounding thoughtful, "Dinner. What's your name, child?"

"Jenny."

"Jenny." She brushed her lips against the skin behind Jenny's ear. Jenny's breath caught in surprise - the woman's lips felt strange. Smooth, cold. "Don't look back, Jenny." 

Jenny started as the woman withdrew, the blade and her arms sliding away. She listened in shock as footsteps retreated back around the corner, leaving her alone and unhurt. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself when the icy breeze curled around her in the woman's absence. With shaking fingers, still warm from where she had been gripping the woman's forearm over her woolen coat, Jenny touched her unmarked neck where the woman had touched her. 

Slowly, in case the woman was waiting, Jenny stepped up to the corner, one hand pressed against the brick as she listened hard for any sound of her heroine in the perpendicular sidestreet. A dragging sound, a distant moan - the man with the dead eyes was waking up.

Jenny took two silent breaths for courage, remembering the woman's warning, before she leaned forward to look around the corner. 

The alleyway was empty.


End file.
